“Be yourself, because everyone else is taken” “The glory of Édouard Lalo (1823-1892),” wrote a scholar in 1925, “was that he cast a shaft of sunlight into French music, expressing joy, life, and chaste tenderness free of sentimentality, and burning

The 1870s were a time for Spanish, or Spanish-themed music, especially by French composers. Édouard Lalo’s Symphony espagnole was written in 1874 and a months after its February premiere, Bizet’s Carmen has its premiere at the Opera-Comique in Paris. Pablo